Want to massively simplify your daily work to-dos and make real progress toward long-term goals? Push the noise aside to focus on the MITs of your day.
What are MITs?
MITs, or Most Important Tasks, are a productivity concept that focuses on identifying and prioritizing the most crucial tasks to accomplish each day. By concentrating on these key tasks, you can make significant progress toward your long-term goals, even if you don’t get everything on your to-do list done.
Focus on what matters. By identifying and pursuing your MITs, you prioritize those tasks that have the most significant impact on your goal/project.
Reduce task overwhelm. Limiting yourself to a few tasks to focus on reduces task overwhelm, burnout, and fatigue.
Boost your productivity. Completing MITs can give you a sense of accomplishment and motivation, because you’re working with an achievable list of goals. It’s possible to finish those in one day, thus feeling that you’re definitively Done instead of timidly closing your laptop at 5:00 and carrying the stress of undone work with you until bedtime.
Speaking of, learn to work less without sacrificing productivity.
How to Identify Your MITs
So how do we know which of our tasks are most important? Here are some ways to determine your MITs.
1. Evaluate your overall goals.
Look at your short-term and long-term goals. Identify which tasks directly contribute to your most important work goals.
2. Assess urgency and importance.
The urgency of the task should also be taken into account, like if it has an upcoming deadline. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to sort your tasks and determine where they fall. The tasks in the “both urgent and important” quadrant will likely be your MITs.
3. Narrow it down.
After you sort your tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix, you might find that there are, like, 40 items in your “urgent and important” list. You can’t do them all in one day, obviously. Typically, you’ll want to aim for 1-3 MITs per day to keep the list manageable and help you focus effectively. If you take on too many, it ruins the purpose of the strategy.
Example of Using MITs
Let’s say you’re a marketing manager for a small company. You’re a couple weeks from the end of this quarter, and each quarter has its own marketing plan. Your MITs for today might look like this:
1. Review. Review quarterly and annual marketing goals, check metrics and KPIs.
2. Draft. Sketch out the new quarter plan based on your review.
3. Update. Start keyword research to update your content list with more topical material.
By focusing on these MITs, you’re making significant progress toward being ready for the new quarter, setting yourself up for success without the overwhelm.
Implementing MITs can transform your productivity, helping you to achieve your bigger goals consistently.
Weaknesses of the MIT Strategy
Now let’s talk shit. Here are the holes I was able to poke in the MIT method. I only found three!
1. What about the little guys!?
The first obvious problem with the MIT strategy is that focusing on 1-3 large tasks can leave a whole lot of important small tasks undone. If you encounter this problem, you might choose to delegate more. If the issue persists, the 1-3-5 Rule might be better for you–more on that in a minute.
2. Burnout risk.
Depending on the industry and individual, employing the MIT strategy might risk burnout. For instance, if you handle huge jobs that really can’t be broken down into pieces small enough for MITs, or if your project is too nebulous to nail down separate activities.
3. Ineffective for some work.
Creative or strategic work can be hard to fit into a strategy like MIT. Some jobs just require a lot more reflection, deep thinking, and creativity, and that’s not always something you can fit into a tight structure.
This is the weakest weaknesses list I’ve ever written. So MITs might just be THAT girl for most situations.
Alternatives to the MIT strategy
But if you do find the above issues make MITs not work for you, here are the closest equivalents.
Eat that frog!
If you knew you had to eat a frog, it would be best to get it done first thing in the morning so you don’t have to stress about eating a frog all day. At least that’s what CEO Brian Tracy says. The principle is simple: If tasks are frogs, determine your biggest, ugliest frog and eat it first.
1-3-5 rule
The 1-3-5 rule can alleviate the MIT weakness of neglecting smaller tasks. It suggests choosing 1 big task, 3 medium tasks, and 5 small tasks to complete in your day. This ensures you’re keeping up with those little chores that keep things running.
80/20 principle
The 80/20 Rule or Pareto Principle is the idea that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. If you find your 20%, you can greatly reduce your workload and increase your productivity by focusing on those key tasks.
Identifying and focusing on your Most Important Tasks of the day can get you to your long-term goals quicker without burnout and overwhelm, plus increase your daily productivity by giving you a clear map of where you’re going.
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